Carving happens….

The temp here is hovering around 105 degrees and working inside of my unconditioned shop this time of the year is not always very fun. But the need to create superseded my need to be comfortable last night and today and I’m glad it did. I was in the process last night of making a full size heron in flight with a fish in its mouth. Carving it from western cedar which sometimes has the tendency to break along its grain while working on the delicate neck the carving grinder I was using violently decapitated the head from its body. It was bad enough that attaching it back to its body was not an option. My wife had just got through putting the kids to bed and had come to visit me in the shop to see how I was coming when she happened upon this gruesome scene. She the eternal and sometimes over the top optimist said why don’t you just mount the head. It made me think that we are all to often focused on the things that did not turn out the way we expected them to that we don’t see the things that were created in the wake.

Below is a carving of a herons head coming out of the water with a fish in its mouth. BTW- the hallway coat rack pictured below the carving was made from a walnut flitch that a friend and I custom milled just inches from a creek that I taught myself how to fly fish on and the pegs were made from a limb off a pin oak tree in our yard.

In life, many thoughts are born in the course of a moment, an hour, a day. Some are dreams, some visions. Often, we are unable to distinguish between them. To some, they are the same; however, not all dreams are visions. Much energy is lost in fanciful dreams that never bear fruit. But visions are messages from the Great Spirit, each for a different purpose in life. Consequently, one person’s vision may not be that of another. To have a vision, one must be prepared to receive it, and when it comes, to accept it. Thus when these inner urges become reality, only then can visions be fulfilled. The spiritual side of life knows everyone’s heart and who to trust. How could a vision ever be given to someone to harbor if that person could not be trusted to carry it out. The message is simple: commitment precedes vision.